Wildwood Boys (19 page)

 

them wore baggy shirts of a cut like his, some in a like gray color,

 

others in butternut or brown or dark yellow, each shirt with a different embroidery but every stitching fanciful. Bill had thought his own

 

hair long for brushing past his collar, but the hair on some of these

 

men hung in wild tangles to their shoulders. Most sported beards

 

and mustaches but many seemed too young yet to do so. He saw Ike

 

Berry talking with someone who looked no more than a child, whose

 

three Colt revolvers on his belt appeared hugely outsized against his

 

small stature.

 

“That sprout you’re eyeballing is Riley Crawford,” Gregg said.

 

“Not yet fifteen years old. His momma brought him to us a couple of

 

months back and told us a tale we’ve heard a hundred times before.

 

Jayhawkers fell on them and called her husband a liar when he said

 

he was on their side and then hanged him. They fired all the buildings and burned the cornfield. Took shameful liberties in handling

 

the mother and daughter both. Young Riley went at one of them

 

with a grub hoe and got his front teeth knocked out. They drove off

 

the stock and stole all the goods and carried them away in the Crawfords’ own wagon. Left the momma and children with not a thing to

 

eat. Not a shovel to bury her husband. They dug the grave with their

 

hands and a tree limb. The woman decided to take the girl and go

 

live with kin in Illinois, but first she borrowed a wagon and brought

 

the boy to us. Told the captain if young Riley was old enough to bury

 

his murdered daddy he was old enough to kill the likes of them who

 

murdered him. The captain said he couldn’t refute her argument.

 

You wouldn’t think so to look at him, but that child has since killed

 

some dozen Union men and I don’t misdoubt he’ll dispatch a few

 

more before he’s through. The jayhawks made a mistake not to kill

 

him when they had the chance.”

 

“Which one’s Quantrill?” Bill said, scanning the faces of the

 

milling men.

 

“He ain’t here, I asked,” Jim Anderson said. “He’s off with the
rest of the company.”

 

A trio of guerrillas was leading a line of thirteen horses into
the woods and each horse held a bloodyshirted body draped over
the saddle. One of the horses bore two bodies. Every dead man
wore red leggings.

 

A dapper man with a feather in his hat and a neatly trimmed
imperial now joined them, and Gregg introduced him as George
Maddox. Maddox said the redlegs would be thrown in the river to
float downstream and be fished out by whoever might want them.

 

“What happened to Uncle Angus and Aunt Sally?” Bill Anderson
said. “What happened here?” He gestured at the surrounding ruin,
and the effort dizzied him.

 

“Old Angus coughed to death a while back,” Gregg said, “but
Sally Parchman, I’m sorry to say, was killed by militia bastards who
came raiding a week ago. The girls said it was an accident, but it
don’t hardly lessen the sin.”

 

Ike Berry heard this as he walked up. “Riley says not a man of
that milish bunch is still breathing,” he said.

 

“Somebody informed those shitheads we were here,” Maddox
said. “We got people making inquiries and we’ll soon enough know
who it was.”

 

“You all were here?” Bill said. “I mean, before?”

 

“Many a time,” Maddox said.

 

“We reckoned Uncle Angus was helping you all, but he never
would say,” Jim said.

 

“He was a good man for keeping his mouth shut,” Maddox said.

 

“I only wish we’d still been here when these bastards showed
up,” Gregg said.

 

“I mean,” Bill said, “have you all been here since we been gone?”

 

They had, Gregg said. About three weeks ago they’d come to
Parchman’s to tend their wounds and rest up after a bad fight in Cass
County. It had been their meanest skirmish yet—against a Federal
force outnumbering them three to one. They’d left sixteen dead and
hardly a man came away unbloodied. Quantrill himself took a ball
in the leg. When they got here, they found the Anderson girls in residence with newly-widowed Sally. “Sally always was a fine one for
the surgeon’s trade, even in her mourning dress,” Gregg said.

 

“Your sisters were quick apprentices as well,” Maddox said,
“especially the darker one, the middle one—Josephine, is it?”

 

“She’s good at anything she puts her mind to,” Bill said. His own
voice sounded to him as though it were coming from somewhere
else. The pain in his head was grown larger.

 

“She’s a caution is what she is,” Maddox said. “She was ladling
water to some of the hurt boys one time and Andy Blunt gave her a
little grab of the hind end as he was passing by. Well sir, she whacked
him with that ladle so hard he spun about like a drunk wondering
which way’s home. Swole his eye up like a plum. Gave us all a good
laugh.”

 

“Andy’s a fine fella and didn’t mean any disrespect,” Gregg said.
“He was just feeling frisky is all. Soon as he got his wits back he
apologized to the girl and you could see by her face she was sorry
she’d hit him—or at least that she’d hit him so hard.”

 

“Good thing for that fellow she wasn’t chopping wood when he
put his hand to her,” Jim said.

 

“The girls said you fellas had gone to Kansas to settle a matter,”
Gregg said. “They were hoping you’d be back before we left.” Bill
and Jim exchanged a guilty glance.

 

They had been at the farm two weeks before Quantrill could ride
again, and then scouts brought word of a Federal cavalry company
that was questioning farmers in the area and burning out those who
couldn’t prove they were Union. The Feds were reported to be fifty
strong, and there were only twenty-four guerrillas at Parchman’s,
including a pair of men too badly wounded to get on a horse. But
Quantrill figured he had the advantage of surprise and better knowledge of the country, so they mounted up, leaving their two wounded
in care of the women. They found the Yanks camped on the Blue and
hit them at first light and dropped more than a dozen before the others went racing back to their post at Independence. Quantrill then
split up his party, taking half the men with him to rendezvous with
the rest of the company, sending Gregg and the others back to the
Parchman place to watch over their wounded and the women until
their brothers got back.

 

“We were on our way here when we came on a party of milish
driving stock,” Gregg said. “Twenty-two of them and each one is
this minute stoking a furnace in hell. After we put them down, we
saw the horses and mules had Angus Parchman’s brand, and we
came here quick as we could, and, well, this . . .”—he gestured at the
burned and broken outbuildings, at the trampled and partly fired
cornfields—“is what we found.”

 

“The girls had already buried our two boys and Sally Parchman,” Maddox said. “We figured it was best to take them up to the
Vaughn place for safekeeping, then come back to see if you boys
showed up. I’d say we got here at a good time.”

 

“There they be!” somebody shouted.

 

“That’s the redleg’s horse! You owe me a dollar, peckerwood!”

 

A pair of horsemen were coming down the trail at a trot, the lead
rider husky and cleanshaved, his short blond hair showing bright in
the sunlight as he took off his hat and wiped his brow. The other
man was leading a saddled horse by its reins and Bill Anderson saw
now that he was Butch Berry.

The blond man was handsome in a hardfaced fashion. He dismounted and smiled around at his fellows’ congratulations for hunting down the runaway redleg. He told Butch Berry to put the redleg
horse with the rest of the captured mounts and Butch said yes sir and
grinned at his brother and the Andersons as he moved off. The blond
man came over to them, slapping dust from his shirtsleeves.

“Boys,” Gregg said, “meet George Todd.” He introduced Todd
to Ike Berry and the Andersons. Todd nodded and fixed an appraising look on each newcomer in turn. The hands thumbed onto his pistol belt were large and strong, the hands of a stonemason, which had
been his trade before the war. He’d told little else of his past except
that he had been born in Canada. But there were many rumors about
him, including one of a murder warrant in Wisconsin for having
throttled a man in a fight over a woman.

“What do you think?” he asked Gregg. “They be bushwhackers?”
“I believe they’ll do fine,” Gregg said.

 

Todd considered Bill Anderson’s bandaged arm and head. “This

one don’t look to be doing so fine right now.”

 

“I figure he can lay up at the Vaughn place till he’s hale,” Gregg

 

said.

 

Todd looked at Jim Anderson and then back at Bill. “You boys

 

got some hardbark sisters. Good girls, the lot.”

 

“We know it,” Jim Anderson said.

 

“All right then, mount up,” George Todd said. He turned and

 

called out for men named Younger and Pool to take the point.
Jim and Gregg helped Bill Anderson to his feet. He tested his

 

injured leg, found that it would bear his weight, and limped over to

 

Edgar Allan. He had to use his right hand to hold to the saddlehorn

 

as he stepped up onto the horse. It was a tricky maneuver but he

 

managed it, though the effort broke a rush of sweat on his face and

 

made him go even lighter in the head.

 

“Mr. Todd!” Calling out as he came riding toward him was Riley

 

Crawford. Todd smiled and took something from his pocket and

 

tossed it underhand to the boy. Riley Crawford caught it and looked

 

on it and his grin revealed a black gap where his front teeth had

 

been.

 

“I want you all to take a good look at that,” Butch Berry whispered to his brother and the Andersons. “I was right there when

 

Todd took it off the redleg.”

 

They watched Riley Crawford remove his hat and lift from

 

around his neck a long necklace of thin rawhide that appeared to be

 

strung with pieces of dried fruit graduating in hue from black to

 

brown to rosy nearest the rude clasp fashioned from a pair of ladies’

 

hairpins. It took a moment for them to realize he was holding a collar of human ears. With his knife tip the boy cut a hole in the ear

 

Todd had just presented him, then held the thing to his mouth and

 

said, “How you like it down in hell, redleg?” He laughed and strung

 

the ear onto the rawhide thong and reclasped it and slipped the necklace back over his head. The horrid garland hung to his belt buckle.

 

Grinning like a goblin with a new trinket, he reined his horse about

 

and hupped away.

 

Butch Berry laughed as if he’d been told a good lewd joke, and

 

Todd called out, “Let’s go!”

They navigated along wildwood routes the Andersons and Berrys
had not known to exist, holding to deer traces and hog runs wending
through the high grass and the thickest and most deeply shadowed
portions of the wildwood, and they sometimes had to hug to their
horses’ necks to dodge the low overhang of tree branches. Wherever
the trails widened sufficiently the riders formed a double column.
The Berrys rode directly ahead of the Andersons, and behind Bill and
Jim came Gregg and Maddox. The guerrillas bringing up the rear of
the column also drove the bloodstained and still-saddled redleg
horses. Because the Union army allotted its best horses to the eastern
war zones, Yankee mounts in Missouri rarely met guerrilla standards
of horseflesh. Redleg horses, however, were mostly stolen Missouri
stock of superior breed, and the guerrillas usually kept for themselves any they captured.

The latesummer air now thickly hot. Bill Anderson’s arm throbbing intensely. His leg ached to the bone. The back of his eyes
sparked with white pain at Edgar Allan’s every stride. His hat did not
fit his bandaged head and so he had folded it and tucked it under his
cantle.

As they rode, Butch Berry told of how he and George Todd had
chased down the redleg who tried to get away. The man made the
mistake of bearing for the open country to the southwest rather than
heading up the Kansas City Road. When they came in sight of him
out in the flats like that, Todd abruptly reined up and slid off his
horse, unsheathed and cocked his Sharps carbine, and laid the barrel
on the saddle to steady his aim while his mount stood still as a
statue. The Sharps could drive a one-ounce bullet through four
inches of oak at a thousand yards and had a range of up to a mile.
He shot the redleg off his horse at full gallop at a distance Butch
reckoned as three hundred yards.

When they got to him he was facedown and still alive. The round
had passed through his right side and destroyed a lung, to judge from
all the blood he’d coughed up. Todd dismounted and rolled him over
with his foot and Butch saw that he wasn’t much older than himself
and didn’t look all that scared. He tried to say something but began
to choke on his blood. Todd drew his revolver and leaned down and
shot him in the heart from so close up the boy’s shirt smoked with
the powder scorching.

“Then he lops his ear off as easy as picking a flower,” Butch said.

He looked back at Gregg and said, “How come he gave it to Riley?”
“The sprout’s been cutting ears from his first day with us,” Gregg
said. “Got the idea from tales of the Mexican War. Heard that Texas
Rangers used to take the ears and noses off the Mexicaners they
killed. Todd, he’ll sometimes dock an ear but he won’t

wear
it, and I
don’t much blame him. Says he’d feel like a damned heathen. So he
gives them to young Riley.”